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Jaqui's Daily Blog

One Day - Two Stories

Though I say so myself as shouldn't (as my dear Mum would doubtless say) I did a really good job making our house Faris-friendly for the visitation of the youngest of the grandsons. Regular readers will remember I told
you of my plans in an earlier blog but I thought you would appreciate an update.

The spiders who had been lurking on the window-sills, hiding behind the piles of books, didn't know what had hit them. One moment
and they were quietly (you never see a noisy spider, do you?) going about their spidery business and returning to their happy home after a fruitful day of web-spinning and catching unwary flies - the next they were faced with me, in all my reforming zeal,
armed with a yellow duster and a can of Mr Sheen. I must have been a Fearsome Sight.

On the beautifully polished window-sills, I placed a number of soft toys - on one, a teddy bear, a polar bear and a brown
animal which was either a chipmunk, an otter or a beaver (we all argued over exactly which for a good part of the afternoon.) On the other window-sill, the Grandparent dolls and a scary Spider Man.

After sweeping
the floors several times - in case of stray pins or, possibly, the odd, homeless spider - I created a tableau in the centre of the room, made up of the basket of toys, the sack of mega-blocks, and an artfully placed teddy bear. Then, having removed my Jazz
Band from the hearth to a Place of Safety on the sideboard, I created a toy kitchen in the place where once the singer, the pianist and the double bass player stood - a toy microwave, colourful pots and pans and plastic food. Finally I pushed the arm-chairs
in front of the CD towers so that Demolition Boy would not be able to reach the contents and strew them across the room.

In the oven, a meat pie; on the hob, a saucepan full of potatoes; and in the steamer,
delicious spring greens. The table was laid, the high chair had been brought in from the garage and given a quick wash down, the Giant Penguin was out on the door step, all dressed up and ready to welcome the visitors. Upstairs in the bath a new bath-mat,
decorated with yellow ducks, because last time here my brave young man found the bath a bit too slippery for comfort.

"Come on, My Boy!" I crowed under my breath: "I am ready for you..."

Faris responds: "The first thing I noticed was that Nanni had moved things round a bit. It looked, well, interesting. Out in the garden I was relieved to see that the bird bath was still in the same position. Daddy saw me looking
and closed the patio doors but they weren't going to stay closed all afternoon, not on such a lovely day, I was pretty sure of that.

Of the toys on the window sills, I loved the chipmunk-otter-beaver best.
Honestly, you would think that four Grown Ups would be able to agree on what kind of animal it was, now wouldn't you? I am only eighteen months old so I can't be expected to know everything though I am doing pretty well, all things considered. Did you know
that I am in Toddler One class at nursery now? I only lasted a day and a half in Baby Two, probably because I was too advanced. Or a bit too fond of throwing things at the other babies. Anyway I imagine that by the time I am older, say 22 months of so, I will
know all about every animal and their language too. I can already speak a bit of Bear, Dog and Duck which is good going for my age, I reckon.

Nanni took me out into the garden to feed the birds. She showed
me how to fill up a blue beaker with seed and then pour it into a feeding tube. I had a quick taste before Nanni could stop me and the bird seed was pretty horrid. I can only presume they haven't heard of Ella's Kitchen organic baby food. I was very good at
filling the tube and hardly dropped any on the ground (Nanni said it wouldn't matter anyway because the birds would find it and eat it) then I carried it really carefully across the garden. Which is where it all went horribly wrong because Nanni insisted on
hanging it up on a tall hook and wouldn't let me keep hold of it. Well, I showed my displeasure as you can imagine, with a good deal of squawking (yes, I am developing a few words of Bird too) until Daddy arrived to rescue Nanni and to stop me dismantling
the bird bath. Such a spoil sport.

I didn't go much on the Grandparent dolls and threw them across the room to show my disapproval. Why have dolls, when you can have the Real Thing? Spider Man was pretty cool
but he didn't do much spidering, at least not while I was around.

I was particularly struck by the microwave oven and did quite a bit of pretend cooking till I heard Nanni say something like: "Isn't he playing
beautifully?" At which I picked up the microwave and sort of hurled it across the room. I do have my reputation as Demolition Boy to consider, you know. While I was about it, I managed to show the Error of Nanni's Ways, by wriggling behind the arm chairs and
finding the CDs. How Nanni ever thought she could keep me out of mischief just by re-arranging the furniture I really don't know.

I do have to hand it to her though. Whatever I throw at her (quite literally
on occasions) she keeps coming back for more.